Why I didn’t go medieval on Krugman, and other book news

I’ve gotten a few messages from friends and strangers this week telling me that they think I should have been harder on Paul Krugman for not mentioning my book in his big NYT Mag essay on “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” Now don’t get me wrong—I really wish he had brought up The Myth of the Rational Market in his article, because that would have a sold a lot of books. I wish the Economist had done the same in its “What Went Wrong With Economics?” cover package a couple months ago. But that doesn’t seem adequate justification for picking a fight. Here’s what I wrote this morning to a reader who thought that “Krugman’s ‘ideas’ are too strikingly similar to yours to give him a pass”: